Town and Country.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, 1 June 1901, Page 709

Town and Country.

By " Politks."

f^ QUESTION which has long- engaged U the attention of statesmen and \ft social reformers, and has lately -rs^ir 1 assumed a very acute phase in Europe, with its great and growing centres of population, is the steady e\odus of the population from the country to the town. The question has been dealt with in a very able manner by Charles Pearson in a recent publication, "National Life and Character ;" and in view of a similar increasing tendency in the Australasian colonies, notably in New South Wales and Victoria, the able writer's investigations and conclusions should have no small interest and importance for us. England, perhaps, more than any other European country, owing to her extensive manufactures, industries, and commerce, exhibits this tendency to centralization, and the gigantic size and ever-increasing proportions of her capital, demand that the conditions favouring such a growth, and t4ie consequences attendant upon it, should receive the most careful study. The considerations affecting the problem of London's huge population, its present and prospective condition, will apply with more or less force to the other large cities throughout the world. This is not altogether a new phase in our many-sided civilization, for twenty years ago in England the urban population was to the rural as three is to two ; on the continent the number of city dwellers was from one to two in five ; in the United States the percentage of townsmen was 22.5, and in Australia 25. Since then there has been in all these countries a gradnal but continuous increase in this percentage, until at the present day in England the ratio is as seven to four, or nearly double. What are some of the causes that have

driven people into the iowns V In the ease of England various causes arc assigned. The introduction of machines and improved agricultural implements, the steam plough, reapers and binders, threshing nmchines, have in tin; country caused a small number of skilled labourers to replace v larger number of unskilled labourers. Macadamized roads, canals, railways, and generally improved methods of communication have placed transport work in the hands of the few who have skill, capital, or technical training, and at the same time by bringing markets nearer have lessened our production. " Formerly there might be a famine in Gloucester," says Pearson, " when corn wan rotting in Kent." Less labour again has been required to produce an equal amount of food stuffs owing to the increased productiveness of the soil, due to .scientific tillage, the use of ensilage, improved methods of irrigation and rotation of crops. Moreover, foreign competition has restricted the extension of agriculture, which should have followed these improvements, by keeping down prices, and rendering further expenditure of capital nnrrununerative.

Thus the redundant population of tho agricultural districts has gravitated to tho towns. And not only the unemployed, but a large proportion of those who have employment, or can easily obtain it, desert the country for the city. This is explained partly by the introduction of tho State Schools, which have tended to raise the intelligence and widen the ambition of the country children, insomuch that they become dissatisfied with the monotony, drudgery, and proverbial poverty of the farm labourer's existence, and escape therefrom to the towns, where there ate better chances of employment, with more adequate wages and

prospect of advancement. Nor in the case of those who are strong, intelligent, and determined, under present conditions, can these advantages be gainsaid.

Other reasons given by the writer apply with equal force to all countries. The city unquestionably has many and varied attractions for all ages, classes, and sexes. The elaborate well-appointed shops of a large city, containing the finished products of the art, science and industry of centuries, are to all an endless source of delight. The best professional skill, legal and medical, the choicest talent, musical, literary, ai'tistic, the finest preachers, in short, the leaders of society, are genei'ally to be found in or near the towns, and not in the country. Then there are the clubs, the theatres, the music halls, the races, the opera, the picture gallery, the comic entertainment, the lecture, the class room, the ball, an endless variety of amusement to suit and satisfy all tastes. One may die of ennui in a counti'j village, but assuredly not in a large town. Hence to the yokel " London, or New York, or Melbourne is an inexhaustible romance;" and to many more than the yokel a year's life amid " the crowd, the hum, and the shock of men " has more attractions than the quiet life and green fields and pastures. Even the sporting Englishman must hurry back from his country manor to watch again and mix with " the full tide of life at Charing Cross." From the very earliest times the inhabitants of a city, righty or wrongly, have been credited with more intelligence, progressiveness and refinement than country people. This estimate, which requires greatly to be modified at the present time, was undoubtedly true for ancient communities. "To the Greek," says Pearson, " man was by nature social, or a city dweller (politikos) ; the polite townsman (asteros) was contrasted with the rough dwellers in the fields {aqroihos). The Roman repeated and euforced the idea that the body politic was in the fashion of a city, and that the oity man was naturally courteous (urbanus), while the dweller outside was uncouth in

manners (rusticus), and the maintainer of an out- worn creed (peqanus). Later on we find the legal synonym for country labourer (colonus and villanus) passing into our language ' clown ' and ' loon ' and ' villain.' "

This is explained by the fact that there was in a city, with its abundant facilities for social intercourse and interchange of ideas, a greater stimulus to intellectual activity and development, while literary and artistic productions were fostered by a fast and searching criticism. The incomparable benefit of Athens was that it supplied to its poets, thinkers and orators a society quick to catch at ideas and keen to sift them. Rome, too, was for long the seat and centime of civilization, learniug and enlightenment for the Ancient World. When it is remembered that these two cities alone contained the choicest spirits of the times, the statement can very well be understood that " A man banished from Athens and Rome felt the whole world closed to him." To the mind of Juvenal the country life, which he professed to admire, could not be endured for five days continuously. When we come to deal with modern communities, the case is a little different. In our times, great centres of population, such as Rome was, are numerous in one country, and all- participate in the culture and intellectual acquirement of the age. Nor are all the elements of culture brought together into one large centre, but owing to educational institutions, chui-ches, the printing press, increased facilities of communication and intercourse, and the generally greater complexities of present day civilization, are widely disseminated over the whole country. The general tendency of civic life nowadays, it has been said, with its all-engrossing industry and commerce, is to turn out no poets, statesmen, philosophers, but merchants, officials, diners-out, " administrators without statesmanship, soldiers without strategy, and literary men without originality." There are on the other hand conspicuous instances of men who gained additional strength and inspiration from their habits

of seclusion and retirement from the world of men. " Dante drew concentration," remarks Pearson, " from the ' salt savour ' of bread eaten iv exile, and Milton from the enforced seclusion of his later years. Great men like Darwin and Newmau lived away from the metropolis, and like Carlyle and George Eliot, restricted their intercourse with it." The question of physical deterioration as the outcome of crowded city life, is an interesting one. It is contended that comparison of size and stature between those who live under modern conditions and those who lived in bygone ages, iv .less crowded centres, points all in favour of the modern. Old coats of mail are an exceedingly tight fit for the average Englishman, which does not prove that the ancient, with his smaller stature, may not have had greater strength, vitality and immunity from sickness. History seems to point to the conclusion that where population is dense, disease is more easily harboured and propagated, and general vitality lowered. In 1349, the Black Death, which came from the densely crowded Asiatic communities of the East, carried off one-third of the population of England, and 100,000 in London alone. Adam Smith has recorded that in his time, owing to the unhealthy conditions of town life, uin some places one-half the children die before the age of four, in many, before the age of seven, and in nearly all, before the age of nine or ten." The factory system, as is well known, among others was l'esponsible for a high mortality and a general lowering of type in the large manufacturing towns, which, in the judgment of Pearson, " will not be so much that of the mobile, critical, originative Athenian, as of the Manchester or Bellevue operative, with an inheritance of premature decrepitude, with a horizon narrowed to parochial limits, with no interests except those of the factory or the Trades Unions, with the faith of the Salvation Army, that finds expression in antics and buffoonery, or with that even more lamentable scepticism,

to which the brutal element in man is tho only reality." This ho attributes mainly to the isolation of the dwellers of (he large towns with its pure air, bright sunshine and green iields, and also from the invigorating freshness of the seashore. " The Athenian, on the other hand, could pass in it couple of hours trom the Acropolis to a country solitude ; he was perpetually serving as a soldier or sailor, or traversing mountain paths to consult an oracle, or to attend a. festival. . . . The three quarter millions of Home were pai.kcd within thirteen square miles, and had tho country with its breezy plains, umbrageous forests, or little townships close at hand." There is a yet mores serious drawback to city life under present conditions in England, and that is the absence of home life for the poor. Overcrowding, which destroys all privacy and even decent!)', is the curse of large; towns, and its effects in the words ol Pearson, v are prejudicial to purity and to the moral sentiment. The old family feeling with which self-respect, loyalty to kindred, discipline, and sexual purity went associated, must disappear in towns." Not only is this priceless advantage denied to many in the towns, but that kindly sympathy and friendly intercourse is unknown, which is one of tho most pleasing features of English country life." At the cricket ground and on the hunting-field, in church and in social gatherings, from harvest home to school feast, squire and parson, farmer and hired meet together animated for the hour with the same kindly thoughts."

It is pleasing to be able to record that by legislation, improved methods of sanitation, and the application of the laws of hygiene, together with the rise of a humanitarian spirit, many of the undesirable conditions attaching to city life are being removed. In the forcible words of Pearson, " science, disregarding the let-alone theory, which declared that the State had no right to interfere with the workman's demand for lodgintis or the capitalist's supply, forbids the conditions of disease to exist anywhere, and states that tho lives and fortunes of the

whole community are at stake if we overlook crowded rooms, bad drainage, foul drinking water and diseased food." In the steady increase of national prosperity, with a more eqnitable distribution of wealth, there will become a higher standard of comfort, and the poor, who are the greatest sufferers from the congested state of modern centres of population, being housed, clothed, and fed, in accordance with improved notions of decency and humanity, will cease to be a reproach ami a danger to our civilization. Under better material conditions they will no longer suffer moral and physical degeneration from the excessive aggregation of human beings due to the requirements of modern industry. Not merely in food, raiment and lodging is an advance possible, but the drawbacks of city life can be lessened by extended opportunities for recreation. If the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain. Excursions to the seaside and into the country, not merely for a day but for a week, a fortnight, or a month, would give new life to millions in London and Glasgow, Paris and Lyons, Berlin or Venice,

New York or Chicago. The establishment of grounds for athletic pursuits, drill, and general recreation should also be apai'arnount consideration for municipalities. Much has already been done, but much remains to be done in those Old World centres. In Australia the same dangers are threatening, especially in the case of Sydney and Melbourne. In. New Zealand, partly owing to the nature of the country, which supports a large population engaged in agricultural and pastoral pursuits, and partly owing to its configuration, there is likely to be no one great metropolis, but four moderately-sized cities. With ample provision already made for parks, domains, botanical gardens, with easy access to the couutry and to the sea, New Zealand cities will have to face less serious problems of population than fall to the lot. of older and less-favoured lands. Her government has already solved one phase of the problem, by enabling workmen to do their work in the city, and at the same time enjoy the charm and the freedom of a house in the country. Thus are combined the advantages of both town and couutry life.